Commentary: Football is still the best bet to avoid a white elephant

Friday 5 September 2008 13:05 BST

Building work is well advanced on the Olympic Stadium. Of all the 2012 venues it's by far the biggest but also the one racing ahead on construction. Some 33 buildings have been demolished to make way for it, 800,000 tonnes of soil have been removed and 3,500 of the 4,000 piles have been sunk. And that is the problem.

For the stadium that the Olympic authorities have ordered - and promised the IOC they would supply when London bid for the Games - does not make economic sense.

They said it would be an athletics centre but apart from a couple of international events such as the world and European championships there is little prospect of people turning up to watch in large numbers.

Much of the time the stadium, even one reduced in size from 80,000 capacity to 25,000, will lie empty and not yield any revenue. A UK athletics meeting will be lucky if it attracts a few hundred spectators, let alone tens

of thousands. This is Lord Coe's blindspot. The chairman of the London organising committee does

not accept there is little popular demand for athletics. Even if he did, he is stuck, as he and his colleagues told the IOC they would provide a permanent athletics facility.

Enter Boris Johnson, who has none of the baggage of Coe and his team. The obvious solution, and one that should have been sewn up before the 2012 bid, is to turn the stadium over to Premiership neighbours West Ham or not-too-distant Tottenham, as Manchester did with the Commonwealth Games centrepiece, now the home of Manchester City.

But there is wariness at handing over a state-of-the-art stadium to a football club at what is bound to be a bargain price. And the clubs weren't keen on a running track around the pitch putting distance between the fans and the action.

It still is the best hope of avoiding a white elephant. Other options, such as inviting a leading rugby side to share the stadium with athletics are unlikely to get off the ground. The East End does not have a history of top-class rugby, and it is hard to see a leading club relocating from west or north London. Another, that nearby football club Leyton Orient should move in, also carries little potential - the Division One team currently attracts crowds of around 4,000.

What should happen is that a Premiership club move in, but construction of a 80,000-capacity venue to be cut back to 25,000 is already under way. Hence the suggestion by Boris's advisers to knock it down completely and build one both in keeping with the football club's blueprint and able to host athletics. That, though, is a drastic and hideously expensive measure.

Before then every effort must be made to bang heads together to try to change the scheme to accommodate a top football club. London's financial legacy demands it.